JPEG: Still Image Data Compression Standard (Digital Multimedia Standards S)

One great feature of this book is the classification of paragraphs having differing degrees of Mathematical insight. I have a minor in Math, and mostly use the easy paragraphs, sometimes the middle-difficulty, and rarely the abstruse. I've seen experts start to wave their hands sometimes. With RAW files one may no longer need .JPG.

This is a reprint of the original JPEG book. Unfortunately, the publisher has scanned in the original. As a result, all of the photographs that are supposed to show the compression behavior and artifacts, show the scanned halftone artifacts instead.Get the original book if you possibly can.

It appears that neither author is a mathematician. The basics are stated correctly, but then the book goes into "fast" encoding and decoding algorithms which don't work because the underlying mathematics is incorrect. The book forced me to look at the mathematics very carefully so that I now understand it all and have working algorithms.

Created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group, the JPEG standard defines a toolkit of processes for lossy and lossless encoding and decoding of continuous-tone still images. This guide, which includes the the complete text of the ISO JPEG standards DIS 10918-1 and draft DIS 10918-2, offers detailed information on the JPEG modes of operation, signaling conventions, and structure of compressed data. It also provides a general review of image-coding techniques, so it does not assume the reader has expert status in data compression and coding techniques.This is by far the most complete exposition of JPEG in existence. It's written by two people who know what they are talking about: both served on the ISO JPEG standards committee. If you want to know how JPEG works or why it works that way, this is the book to have. There are a number of errors that were in the first printing of this book that were all repaired in the second printing. The official specification of JPEG is not currently available on-line, and is not likely ever to be available for free because of ISO and ITU copyright restrictions, which makes it valuable to have in this book.If you study this book in depth, you should be able to write programs that completely control the reading and writing of JPEG image files. This is different from most other books that contain scattered information on the JPEG standard and on image compression, but contain insufficient information for programmers who actually need to work with the standard on a pixel-by-pixel level. Also, considering this book was published by an "academic publisher", I was surprised at its accessible tone and numerous helpful diagrams. Note that if you are interested in JPEG2000, that this book does not contain information on that standard. The following is the table of contents:Introduction.Image Concepts and Vocabulary.Aspects of the Human Visual Systems.The Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT).Image Compression Systems.JPEG Modes of Operation.JPEG Syntax and Data Organization.Entropy Coding Concepts.JPEG Binary Arithmetic Coding.JPEG Coding Models.JPEG Huffman Entropy Coding.Arithmetic Coding Statistical.More on Arithmetic Coding.Probability Estimation.Compression Performance.JPEG Enhancements.JPEG Applications and Vendors.Overview of CCITT, ISO, and IEC.History of JPEG.Other Image Compression Standards.Possible Future JPEG Directions.

This book is a "must have" for anyone interested in understanding the JPEG standard. It has two distinct parts.The second half is the JPEG standard itself. It contains all the technical details of how JPEG works, including pseudocode flow charts, and test data to verify JPEG compliance.The first half is the author's (less formal) understanding of the JPEG standard, where he explains the details of the standard which might be unclear to the novice.Everything from the aspects of the human visual system, to the mathematics of Discrete Cosine Transformation, to entropy coding, to JPEG file organization is explained.I knew nothing about image processing before studying this book. After studying this book (for a long time) I was able to write a complete application and have total control over reading and writing JPG files.

The only way to go! This is a well written book that is structured like a text book, but stays true to the standard. Excellent overview of FDCT theory and Entropy Coding.

Received the book rather quickly. The book is not very recent but the content is enough to get programmers on the way. More up to date documentation is required to build a more accurate interface. Hats off to the people who worked on this book.

This book is not for everyone. It is a dense tome some 4cm thick. It assumes some advanced mathematics and it is not an easy read. It is however without doubt the most complete reference book on the JPEG image encoding standard and includes details, flowcharts, samples and test cases that allow implementors to check and modify JPEG codecs. If you need to modify internals of a JPEG codec then at some stage you will need to buy this book. The shocking pink cover is not easy on the eyes and illustrations are monochrome but with those minor reservations I heartily recommend it. I bought a secondhand copy as I need it to work from and do not need an expensive mint edition for that! It provides some history and context and complete details of all the obscure variants defined by the standard including some that are seldom seen implemented. Some parts like modem speeds have dated but the fundamentals are still very sound nearly two decades later.If you are looking for a simpler and cheaper introduction to the mathematics and sample code behind image encoding then John Miano's  Compressed Image File Formats: JPEG, PNG, GIF, XBM, BMP (ACM Press)  is an easier read despite having the odd typo. That book includes a sample code CD and covers several other image encoding schemes as well. But it only handles the most common JPEG compressed streams whereas this book "JPEG Still Image Data Compression Standard" is encyclopedic and three times the size. Compressed Image File Formats: JPEG, PNG, GIF, XBM, BMP (ACM Press)